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Illustrated by Eric Kincaid and Eric Rowe Adapted by Lucy Kincaid ISBN 0 86112 135 X © Brimax Rights Ltd 1982 Published by Brimax Books, Cambridge, England 1982 Printed in Hong Kong |
This collection of retold fairy tales was published by Brimax Books in 1982 as part of the 'Cast a Spell' series, a series of four books featuring fairy tales adapted by Lucy Kincaid and illustrated by Eric Kincaid and Eric Rowe. See series list.
The cover of Enchanted Tales shows blue circles radiating out from a central light above a collection of characters from the stories within: A giant, a man with an obscenely long nose, a witch with a cane, a laughing gnome, a leprechaun cobbler, and a farmer. Below them are whorls of white, perhaps representing wind or enchantment, and pouring over to the back cover where we see a man fleeing across a dark forest, and another (smaller) gnome. This cover format (radiating circles and whorls with characters from the collection) is repeated across the other covers in the series.
The endpapers show a wizard at work in a room with bats, a rat, a vulture, and other odd creatures – including a servant carrying buckets of water and a sinister shadowed figure creeping down the stairs. These endpapers are identical to those in The Kincaid's Book of Witches, Goblins, Ogres, and Fantasy, published by Brimax Books in 1980.
The loose endpaper and title page illustration is shared across all four books in the series. The double-page spread shows a misty forest at night, with a Tudor homestead in a meadow in the distance, and tiny doors in the trunks and roots of the trees.
The title pages note that some of these stories also appear in Witches Goblins Ogres and Fantasy (WGOF); Wizards Giants Trolls and Magic (WGTM); and Tales of Magic and Enchantment (TME), all published by Brimax Books. I've marked the stories I've identified as appearing in identical form in the previous works below.
The six stories collected here are:
- Three Golden Hairs (WGTM)
- The Piglet and the Gnome
- Long Nose (WGOF)
- A Pot of Gold (WGTM)
- Hidden Magic
- Uncama the Hunter
Three Golden Hairs
The first story of the collection is an adaptation of the Grimms' tale 29*, "The Devil and the Three Golden Hairs", first translated into English as "The Giant and the Three Golden Hairs" and similarly featuring a giant here. It is related to the Czechoslovakian fairy tale published in 1919 by Parker Hoysted Fillmore, "The Three Golden Hairs", also known as "Three Golden Hairs of Grandfather Know-All", but those versions don't seem to have been sources for Kincaid's adaptation, which follows the Grimms' version fairly closely.
Kincaid's adaptation is fresh and lively and explains that the giant "knew the answer to almost everything." It doesn't explain why the grandmother of the giant chooses to help Jack, but through her kindness (turning him into an ant so the giant can't find him, tweaking the hairs from her grandson's head, and asking him Jack's three questions) Jack is able to earn a fortune in rewards and live happily ever after. Thank goodness for grandmothers!
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| A giggling grandmother: detail from illustrations for 'Three Golden Hairs' |
I liked that in this version the giant is good-natured about getting jerked awake by his grandmother's startling "dreams" and that Jack doesn't deliberately send his father-in-law to his doom, and might also redeem him – "It so happened that the King himself was the next person to cross the lake. The ferryman handed him the rudder. The King is ferrying passengers to this day, which probably serves him right. Perhaps, one day, Jack will tell him what he told the ferryman."
The Piglet and the Gnome
I haven't been able to identify a source for this tale, and if anyone can provide further information, I'd be grateful.
It's a simple tale of a thief that steals a piglet, pops it in a sack, and then unwisely stops for a rest in the woods. A gnome, disturbed by the piglet's squealing and wriggling around, sets the piglet free and takes its place in the sack to play some mischief on the thief. Another gnome calls out to him, and the gnome in the sack answers, giving the thief such a fright (as he thinks the piglet is talking) that he hightails it from the woods – an image repeated on the back cover of the collection:
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| A frightened thief: illustration from back cover of Enchanted Tales |
Long Nose
I haven't been able to identify a source for this tale, but it feels very familiar: the third son of a miller is able to earn riches and a good marriage where the eldest two sons do not because he alone is polite to an old woman in the woods. As the story states at the end: "Which goes to show, doesn't it, that it is always wise to be polite, especially if you meet a witch."
In this story, Robin, the third son, follows in the footsteps of his brothers Roland and Rupert in a proposal of marriage to Margaret, the pretty daughter of a nearby farmer. While Roland and Rupert put their nose in the air and ignore Old Molly when she greets them on their way through the woods, Robin stops and shares his fears that Margaret will reject him like his brothers, in his case because he has a long nose – "the kind of nose that people laugh at". Old Molly gives him a magic ring that can reduce nose size with the words "Bless it" and increase nose size with the words "Drat it".
As it turns out, Robin didn't need the ring to win Margaret's heart, but it was useful in disposing of another suitor, who through his greed gets a very long nose indeed and rewards Robin with riches when he shortens it. I found the illustration quite disturbing! But Robin and Margaret were well set up to live happily ever after.
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| A grotesquely long nose: detail from illustrations for 'Long Nose' |
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| A happy couple: detail from illustrations for 'Long Nose' |
A Pot of Gold
This story appears to be an adaptation of the Irish folktale The Field of Boliauns, published by Joseph Jacobs in Celtic Fairy Tales (1892).
In Kincaid's adaptation, the adult Tom Fitzpatrick of Jacobs' tale is translated into a boy named Patrick, and rather than happening upon a leprechaun by chance, he goes hunting for them, until he finally finds one, and follows his mother's advice to not look away from the leprechaun. However, when the captured leprechaun reluctantly shows Patrick the thistle under which his gold is buried, Patrick pops him in his pocket while he hurries home to get a spade. He had marked the thistle with one of his garters, but returns to find the whole field of thistles covered in identical garters. "His mother said, it was entirely his own fault." (A rather unsympathetic ending! But now that I know that leprechauns are actually cobblers and their gold is the result of their hard work, trying to get it seems rather unfair theft so the ending seems fit for purpose.)
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| A leprechaun is snatched while at his cobbling work: detail from illustrations for 'Pot of Gold' |
Hidden Magic
I've not been able to find a source for this story and it felt more modern than the others, which made me wonder if it is an original story by Lucy Kincaid, although the title page of the collection presents the tales as "adapted by" rather than "adapted or written by" Kincaid. Perhaps someone else knows the source?
In this story, a cheerful farmer, John the Ploughman, hears what he thinks is a boy crying in the bushes. He goes in search of the sad boy, concluding that he's playing hide and seek, and then finds a tiny broken shovel and thinks the boy is sad about that and just very shy. He mends it for him and returns to his work, only to find later that a tiny loaf of delicious bread is in its place. The narrator then tells us that the shovel belonged to a fairy baker and was needed "to lift the hot bread, pies, and beautiful cakes as light as thistledown out of the oven". The crying was the sound of hungry fairy children. In future years at ploughing time he always finds bread on the same rock he found the broken spade.
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| John the Ploughman examines the broken shovel while a dejected fairy baker walks away behind him Illustration for 'Hidden Magic' |
Uncama the Hunter
Uncama is a figure from Zulu mythology, but the source of Kincaid's version of his story appears to be Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia (Vol. 7, p. 4969), which features a variant of the tale very close in form and language to the short tale Kincaid tells. See Uncama's Adventure [in Wonderland] (Brian's Blog).
In Kincaid's adaptation, Uncama is a bold African hunter who lives in a small village on the edge of the forest with his wife and baby son. When an animal keeps rooting up the village's vegetables he worries they will all starve, so he chases the animal off and follows it down a hole into an underground country where a tribe of savage dwarves attack him. When he escapes to the surface, only an hour has passed for him but above ground fifty years have passed.
Other versions of the tale seem to have Uncama return (from the Underworld) when thought dead, but not after fifty years, and specify that the animal was a porcupine. Here it is featured as a colourful kind of boar:
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| Uncama chases the creature: detail from illustrations for 'Uncama the Hunter' |
Summary
This is a very enjoyable collection of six tales retold by Lucy Kincaid. I find her story-telling style fresh and to the point. There don't appear to be many copies of this title available online, but since the stories are repeated from other collections those might be easier to find. Witches Goblins Ogres and Fantasy (WGOF) and Wizards Giants Trolls and Magic (WGTM) are both available for reading at the Open Library (Internet Archive).
Footnote
* Grimm's tale numbers are the numbers of the fairy tales collected in Kinder- und Hausmärchen (KHM). The numbers range from KHM 1 (The Frog Prince/King) to KHM 210 (The Hazel Branch). The numbers are based on the 1857 edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen, which is divided into 2 volumes. The original Kinder- und Hausmärchen was first published as two separate volumes (Vol. 1 in 1812 with 86 stories) and Vol 2. in 1815 with 70 stories). The 1857 edition was the seventh edition, much expanded, and with changes to the tales. This is the edition that most English translations are based upon and is the quintessential "Grimm's Fairy Tales".
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